Medal Ceremony—Notification

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I just want to bring to your attention a matter that concerns the free speech rights of members of this Parliament. Yesterday in open session at the Inter-Parliamentary Union congress in Cape Town a leading delegate from the Chinese National People’s Congress tried to expunge from the record of that conference the critical comments that were previously made about occurrences in Tibet by a member of the New Zealand delegation at that conference, Nandor Tanczos. I think this is a matter that you might want to look into further, because it is perhaps something that you could bring up with your counterpart, the Chair of the National People’s Congress in China—that this is not acceptable parliamentary behaviour and that New Zealand MPs will not be intimidated from stating their critical views.